I’m a complete freak when it comes to organizing and storage! I love it and it loves me… a match made in heaven. So, naturally, before I can venture into making soap full-time, I have to get all my supplies and ingredients organized.

Now, I live in a 800 square foot manufactured home (a modern mobile home), so space is not a luxury for me, but I think it should make due just fine till I get famous.

From one organization freak to another… I’m LOVING my ‘Resource Binder’ too.

I’m almost ready to start making. I should finally have everything I need this week. Steve’s been helping me plan my first batch and what to put in it. We decided to try a hop soap for all those beer lovers out there. It’s gonna be great.

Life’s full of bumps. I just wrote this huge paragraph venting about how… well, in a nut shell, we should cherish the bumps and not consider them a detour from our ultimate goal of success, but decided to start back at square one to just say – Life is the bumps and I’m intrigued to see where they take me.

This all to say, the financial struggle of our time has turned us in a new direction. Sometimes I think I’m exempt to stuff happening around me, then SMACK! it hits me in the face and I’m force to change my tune. Change is good!

I got some pink peonies at TJ’s a couple days ago. Peonies are my absolute favorite flower! They’re huge and complex and smell delicious. I took some pictures to share. Embrace the day and make it count.

My soap research has begun! This past weekend I attended a 2-day intense coarse on soapmaking at The Nova Studio in Pt. Richmond. Many actually flew in from other areas to take Lori’s class. I met so many wonderful people! It was the most fun that I’ve had in a long time. Lori Nova, our soap expert and teacher, posted a picture of the class. Click on the picture to view it bigger.

Sorry in advance to everyone I will be probing for information to see what you like best in a bar of soap. I’ve been researching and reading up on ingredients and methods and scents, etc., but most of all what people want. Thank you to those who have already helped so much by giving me their opinions, soap samples to try and for just being supportive.

It’s not as hard to make soap as I thought, but there are many ways to make it depending on what outcome you  need. We made both cold process and hot process soap in the class. Both are somewhat similar but hot process has an extra step that speeds up the set up time and allows you to use the soap safely much sooner.

I’m picking up my final supplies this weekend and plan to make my FIRST batch early next week! Stay tuned. I’m going to document and blog the whole process.

In the words of Molly Shannon as she’s kicking her leg in the air, ” I love it, love it, love it!”

[soap bars in above picture created by The Nova Studio, half-used by me and my hubbie]

To be frank, blogging sucks! I find myself going in and out of wanting to do it at all. I don’t know what my inspiration should be and among many others, I’ve struggled with knowing what to write about. No one wants to hear about this stuff. A lot of the time, I end up writing about what I think others want to read about. I know, that’s bad you say. You should write about things that make you happy, you say. blah blah blah. Ya, your right. What if I just started taking pictures of my life, my house, my pets, my habits, my stuff and wrote about that? What if this blog had no other purpose in this world than to show everyone reading who I am?

Seems kinda narcissistic. Ok, I’m over it.

It’s cherry season! If you have a minute, go get some. A cute neighbor girl came to our door last night and sold us a bag for $3. I put them in my vintage strawberry pattern bowl today and have been chomping them off their cute little stems! There’s a bit of my life today whether you wanted to read about it or not.

Ya ya ya! I’m going to soap making boot camp this weekend. Two intense days of nothing but learning how it all works from people who have been doing it for years. It’s a class offered by The Nova Studio in Pt. Richmond. This is extra important to me because it’s what I’ve been needing to get a jump on Little Brown Owl Soap Company.

As some of you know, it’s been in limbo for well over a year now. I have a website designed and am working with my super talented husband to get that up and running (but probably not launched till I have something to sell :)). I may be contacting some of you soon to test out the product. I need to figure out packaging and shipping methods still, but it’s all coming along. I’m especially excited to attempt a new scent that will hit home with most of the fellas I know (Stephen’s idea of course!)… Hop soap. I know ladies, it seems like it would be kinda smelly, and not in the good way. Don’t worry, I’ll add a woman’s touch, so that it will attract instead of turn away.

Some nice things about l.b.o. soap is that it’s purely vegetable, mild and natural, made with essential oils (no animal products, perfumes, or fake stuff of any kind). Some other scents I’m leaning toward are sandlewood, patchouli, douglas fir, lavendar, milk, tea tree, eucalyptus, rosemary mint, oatmeal and my all-time favorite, cocoa butter. We’ll see what really turns out.

Ta ta for now.

Typography has always been a form of art that I’ve been super interested in. Composition created in the simplest form. type + white space = love

Recently I watched the documentary Helvetica and loved it! So interesting. I have to admit though, I fell asleep toward the end… only because I had a crazy long day and it was very late. The movie itself was fantastic. Check it out.

Brief history of the typeface taken from www.wikipedia.com: Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Munchenstein, Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with the typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Die Neue Haas Grotesk, the aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

In 1960, the typeface’s name was changed by Haas’ German parent company Stempel to Helvetica — derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland — in order to make it more marketable internationally.

I’ve figured something out, but I don’t know what really. I did a bit of research and compiled a group of pictures. Ok, I’m not sure why I did this in the first place. It’s all entirely random and there’s not much point to it besides trying to compare my style attempts to those of celebrities that I am aware of. Whatever the point may be, here goes. I’ve always liked Audrey Hepburn. I love her movies and her fashion sense. I enjoy how she seems like everyone’s friend and appears happy in pictures. I want to be carefree and fun and experience life. On the other hand, I also love Winona Ryder. Besides all the crap she’s been involved with, I love her back in her 90’s, rebellious, short haired “Reality Bites” era. You know what I mean? She makes me want to paint and write in journals and sit in coffee shops all day. I identify with that. Although I doubt that anyone who knows me would ever label me as a “rebellious,” but still. An finally, I’ve discovered that I love Michelle Williams of late. She’s collects books, dresses super cute and she’s a mom too! I look forward to becoming a stylish mom that reads a lot some day. I guess I would have to become a mom at all first…

It was fun putting this together. Just a bit about myself, kinda. Make your own sense of it.

I just wanted to briefly brag about my husband and his awesome computer nerd skills! My computer broke a few weeks back and yesterday, in order to fix it, Stephen transplanted my Mac Power Book G4 into a new housing. This may not sound that intense, but I was like performing surgery at a microscopic level (well, that’s kind of an exaggeration). Anyway, it was crazy, and my sweetie pulled it off. Here’s a picture showing what he had to take apart and put back together. After he got it all together again, to our surprise and delight, it turned on and the problem was fixed

He’s got the skills to pay the bills and he’s kinda cute too.

I want to backtrack a bit to tell you a bit more about my experience at the MOMA on Saturday. I’ve been a few times before and obviously loved it enough to want to go again for my birthday. It’s like a lot of other museums with multiple floors and a lot of walking and standing, but it’s more of a magical, almost spiritual place for me. When I’m there, I feel like I could be there forever and nothing else matters in the world.

Stephen, God bless him, was so patient with me as I made my way through… slowly. A bunch of us started out together but eventually headed our separate ways as we felt lead to. It wasn’t too crowded and it was quiet. Occasionally, I would over hear someone making some comment about how their five year old could paint the same thing. I silently laugh to myself and feel a little sad that they don’t see the hours, days, even years of work this person put into it. They don’t see the years of study or the hundreds of drafts that came before it. They don’t see the multiple layers, specific choice of color and composition.

This last visit I decided that I have a favorite room. At the end of the long chain of rooms, there’s this huge Rothko titled No. 14 (1960) hanging on the end wall. It’s a brilliant blue and red/orange. It’s super bold and impressive. I love it. But directly to the right of this is a piece by Franz Kline titled Lehigh V Span (1959-1960). This was my favorite in the room. It’s incredible and has so much depth. I had to make another turn around that floor to see it again.

I hope everyone enjoyed the day as much as I did.

Mark Rothko, No. 14 (1960)

Franz Kline, Lehigh V Span (1959-1960)

So I just had my 27th birthday yesterday. I have to say it was a weird one. Not at all in what we did, but rather how I feel. Every other year of my twenties has been no big deal, just another birthday… but this year I’m definitely feeling older. My cute husband organized an awesome day in the city with a bunch of our good friends. We went to the MOMA, then to 21st Amendment for dinner and beer. It was a great day! Thanks to everyone who came or wanted to come.

This Wednesday, we’re also going to see the Jimmy Eat World – 10 year anniversary Clarity Tour at The Fillmore. I’m so excited. I still say Clarity was their best. Here’s a clip I found of a show recently.